


We Cling to What is Gone

by echoes_of_another_life



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 08:03:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoes_of_another_life/pseuds/echoes_of_another_life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark was right, if there’s one thing Lex has it’s willpower and he’s not the type to roll over without a fight. So if he’s not dead and Zod has control of his body then Lex is still in there…</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Cling to What is Gone

We Cling to What is Gone

_He’d forgotten what it felt like to be helpless, always controlling, never controlled, it was how he survived in his world, how he managed from day to day. But this wasn’t his world, this was a place he’d only visited once, and then he’d kicked and screamed, raged outwardly to be heard, even with the restraints._

_He’d begged, pleaded for release, promised his father that he was better now, he didn’t need the medications because he was cured and a cured person didn’t need to be in hospital. He’d veered off into the abyss but he’d managed to claw his way back, at least he thought he had._

_Is that where he was now? Had he slipped, lost his footing and somehow slid back into the abyss, had his father been right all along and he was ill… insane._

_No, he was sure of it, this was different, there was nothing holding him down, no restraints to bind him, so why couldn’t he move?_

Zod took a deep breath, clenched and unclenched his fingers, tested the vessel’s physical strength and smiled inwardly as he sensed the other’s confusion. He stood, shoulders back, head high, his back to Kal-El and waited, smiling to himself as he recognised the fear emanating from the human consciousness within. So this was planet Earth, a world dominated by fear. Strange that The Brain Interactive Construct would choose a vessel who would give in to emotion so easily, who would relinquish power to another without a fight, at least he was physically strong. 

This was the place that Jor-El had chosen for his only son, Krypton’s last remaining son, a place of weakness, where pitiful emotion ruled over logic and will.

He took in his new surroundings with disgust… the Kingdom Kal-El had carved out for himself. This was the home of the boy who would be King… if he still had a Kingdom to rule that was.

Zod turned, took the necessary few steps which brought him face to face with Kal-El, ate up the space between them with confidence and immediately stepped around him, forcing Kal-El l to look up at him. And saw a similar fear reflected in the eyes that looked back at him.

_Human._ Zod bit back the disgust at the other’s weakness. The last remaining representative of ‘The House of El’, masquerading as a human. He reached out to touch his face, pulled back quickly when he realised the movement did not belong to him and heard the consciousness within him stir. 

_Clark…._

So the ‘vessel’ was familiar with Kal-El, even friends, possibly more Zod thought when he was suddenly hit with a wave of emotion that was not only foreign to him but abhorrent. He cared, this Lex creature actually cared for Jor-El’s son, oh it was buried deep, masked by hatred and resentment but it was there, strong enough to give the human hope, something to fight for. 

It was unexpected, and something he had neither the time nor the patience to tolerate. There was a darkness within the human which could prove useful but it was a darkness that came from desire and which could prove, even be disastrous to his plans for this world. Even now, just his nearness to Kal-El had caused it to claw its way to the surface, a desire to be desired with such desperate intensity. Already he could feel the inner emptiness which he sensed that only Kal-El had been able to fill. 

Such a void could not be filled, his time with Jor-El had proven that. He’d tried himself, tried to be the person Jor-El had wanted him to be, tried to portray the image Jor-El expected of him, as his friend, his confidant _his lover_. But it had all been false, a desperate attempt to cling to an emotion that had made him weak. A lie pasted over a gaping hole-an emotional wound, and all to hide the pain of Jor-El’s rejection, even from himself. A lie that became for a short time his own reality, a pathetic lie that became his living hell, and his lover’s failure as Jor-el had fought to keep him on a leash while he had fought for everything Jor-El had.

It hadn’t begun that way. It had begun with friendship, love and a desperate need for approval that had over time twisted itself into social disobedience but they were never real enemies. Not then. It was a war against old wounds, it wasn’t the later political injustice which burned them to the core. It was the lies which betrayed their closeness, their need for one another and the wounds they had caused. 

Not all enemies fight with weapons of violence, especially Jor-El. He had fought with the one thing that would bring Zod to his knees. He had taken everything they had once meant to one another and cast it aside. Withdrawn his love, his approval, his friendship and used the strength that once gave them as a weapon against him. Until what once made them strong, in turn made them weak.

And yet to the people of Krypton he appeared a great and noble man, a pillar of strength, while to Zod he became a fraud.

The man who once lay beneath him, bathed in sweat and crying out his name as he took everything Zod gave and begged for more. Clung to him in the night with whispered pleas that he never change only to eventually demanded nothing less than for him to do exactly that. That his once friend, lover must live according to the values of honesty and integrity which Jor-El demanded from his people, by the boundaries he set, the laws he created. 

And in Zod’s refusal withdrew the one thing they stood for, defiled the very thing he desperately wanted. He defiled their love, tried to impose on Krypton his own ideas of what should and should not be done until only a fine line separated them. 

There was a time when the only thing to separate them was the distance it took to reach out and pull the other into the heat of an embrace. Until Jor-El turned away from the warmth of Zod’s arms and the only thing to separate them was their willingness to kill.

And he had, dedicated his life to exposing Jor-El’s hypocrisy, sought out all the contradictions in Jor-El’s valued traditions, teaching anyone that would listen. He'd laughed at Jor-El’s attempts at discipline, delighted in his disobedience, attacked Jor-El’s world with a vengeance directed soley at its ruler. He was going to tear down the public statue of his once lover and reduce him to rubble. Even if that meant destroying himself in the process.

And yet he knew, even in his blind hatred, what he desperately wanted was for Jor-El to love him, as he once had. But all that was swept into a dark corner of forgotten memory to collect cobwebs of guilt, resentment and hatred as he held Kryptron’s destruction as evidence that he knew condemned Jor-El’s world. While masking his own vulnerability and weakness. And he knew that the quickest and easiest defence when threatened with the truth, the easiest way to hide the truth of his own weakness and give the illusion of power was to destroy.

Just as this human would. Perhaps the Brain Interactive Construct has chosen this vessel for that very reason, the emotional weakness that would be the the root of his greatest strength. He was ruthless but afraid, cunning but error-prone and dangerously unpredictable, he ruled those beneath him by fear but Zod could sense that it was fear that ruled him.

Fear of losing Kal-El’s love, his friendship but above all, his approval. Zod knew from experience that it is not that which we hate that destroys us. It is the fear that what we love will one day be the destruction of ourselves. And he wouldn’t let that happen, not again. This human’s love for Jor-El’s son could prove to be the catalyst that destoyed Earth and he had plans for this world, plans for this body, the vessel he inhabited. He wasn’t about to be weakened by its love for another, especially not the son of Jor-El. 

If they couldn’t rule this planet together then they would destroy it together, and Zod could sense by looking at Kal-El that he didn’t have the strength to rule the world this human would create. Just as Jor-El hadn’t but Zod had let his weakness for Jor-El blind him. But he’d since learned never to allow emotion to cloud his judgement, he’d learned to look into another’s eyes and see the naked truth and know whether they would betray him before they knew it themselves.

“You have your father’s eyes,” Zod announced. And he did, the same look of innocence that masked the betrayal, the ability to switch from ally to enemy without a moment’s pause… just like his father.

“Hello Kal-El…” Zod smiled as the presence within his new body kicked out in denial of the name, raged against Zod’s closeness to Kal-El, emotions that only served to seal Kal-El’s fate. 

_Was that his voice, it sounded like his voice, only colder, more cruel and Clark why was Clark so afraid, even in the darkness he could sense Clark’s fear, the confusion that matched his own. And then he remembered…_

_Clark’s voice, Clark angry with him, Clark admonishing him for having so little will power. And he hadn’t listened, he’d accused Clark of trying to kill him._

_Only he hadn’t, he tried to save him, just as he always did, tried to pull him back from the abyss._

_Clark, the one person who was always there when the darkness began to close in around him._

_Clark Kent, his friend, his enemy but always his saviour…_

_Lex tried to move forward, tried to reach out to Clark the way his body had a moment ago but it failed to respond to his wishes, failed to allow him access to the warmth he could feel mere feet away. Despite everything that had passed between them recently, it was still there, Lex knew it, even as he lay beneath him, blade at his throat… Clark still cared…_

“Where’s Lex?” 

“Lex is dead!” Zod announced without a flicker of emotion. 

Zod had no doubt that Kal-El would fight for his friend, he’d proven that in his unwilligness to kill him. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to stop him another way, as Jor-El had. There were worse things than death, as Zod had learned all too well when Jor-El had cast him into a prison of his own making and left him at the mercy of the Phantom Zone.

But not before he’d taken away Zod’s physical self. Taken away Jor-El’s only weakness when he’d learned that despite their hatred for one another he couldn’t resist the temptation of his arms. All those nights he’d crawled into Zod’s bed, allowed himself to feel what they once had, gave himself up to Zod’s caress, unabandoned, freely, openly and without condition. Only to demand his obedience when the spell was broken and he’d cried out his weakness as he spilled his orgasm against Zod’s sweat-drenched skin.

Better for Kal-El to believe this human dead, Lex was a signifer, a symbol even by his absence, yet he represented for Kal-El something else. Something not immediately present but which through time would grow in importance. What was important was what this human represented, he was not only Kal-El’s weakness but his failure. 

Kal-El had failed to save this world because he couldn’t kill the one person who was capable of bringing it to its knees. He couldn’t destroy this human vessel because underneath the hatred, buried deep beneath the denial was love. Kal-El would fight for that love, he’d deny it to the world, to himself but at night when he was alone, as the population of this world sought comfort in each other, he’d want it. He’d want the memory of its closeness, the warmth it gave him, the heat that surrounded him as their limbs entwined and their bodies joined. The rush of power they were capable of creating together if not as rulers then as lovers, as they raced head long into the abyss that only each other could provide. 

Kal-El would fight it as Jor-El had fought it but ultimately he would fail as night after night he surrendered his body if not his will to the one person who was strong enough to defy him. 

“Why are you here?” 

Why was he here? Zod didn’t hesitate. Because it was impossible to heal your own emotional brokeness through the body of another person as broken as oneself. Something Jor-El never learned but something he’d had plenty of time, locked within the Phantom Zone to think about. Jor-El had taken away his physical body but he couldn’t take away the pain, the anger, the memory of being discarded and cast aside from the person you needed the most.

“For the same reason as anyone who had been imprisoned like a beast… revenge!”

And he’d have it!

“Your father banished me to an eternal hell, trying to save a doomed race and in the end the only survivor of his pathetic crusade was his son.” 

Damned him to an eternity of loneliness, where his only company were the memories of Jor-El’s betrayal.

“Then this is between us, these people did nothing to harm you!”

How wrong he was, just like his father. Jor-El had never truly understood either and Zod knew that the point of his ultimate betrayal was to always miss the point. The point was he hadn’t destroyed Krypton, Jor-El had. The day he cast him aside and betrayed his trust, his friendship and his love.

The day he cast him out, stripped him of his physical presence as punishment for being the one temptation Jor-El was too weak to deny. And now Jor-El was going to pay. He was going to take this world, this world that had sheltered and protected his remaining flesh, his son and he was going to make it bleed in the name of Kal-El, son of Jor-El, the last remaining son of Krypton.

“No but you feel no pain greater than to see others in agony!”

And before he had finished they would feel agony, they would writhe in it for harbouring Jor-El’s son.

“I won’t let you destroy this planet like you did Krypton.”

Zod was tempted to tell Kal-El the truth, tell him how Jor-El’s betrayal had destroyed Krytpon, destroyed his father, his mother, his people but it would bring him little satisfaction. And he would never again feel the need nor desire to explain himself to another. Least of all the son of his betrayer.

“You don’t have a choice…”

And he didn’t!

“Unless you join me?”

Zod paused, he knew the bond was strong between the human vessel and Kal-El but he hadn’t bargained on it being strong enough to rival his power over the vessel’s actions. Even now the consciousness within was kicking and screaming, trying to claw it’s way to the surface to reach Kal-El, reach out to him, to keep him close. And he couldn’t dispose of the vessel, he needed its physical self if he was to take this world and make it his. If he was to build the world that should have been his to rule, alongside Jor-El. 

But Jor-El would never join him and as much as it would please him to have Jor-El’s son by his side, ruling a world his father would despise, he knew Kal-El would one day betray him as his father before him. 

He would betray the vessel, turn against him, if he hadn’t already and in its rage the vessel would bring this world to its knees in its attempt to hurt Kal-El. That he could understand, even admire but this was his turn for revenge. He wasn’t about to hand the credit for his greatest triumph to a pathetic, inferior human. Even if its motives were his own.

“I’ll never join you!”

And he wouldn’t nor more than he would join the human, he would wage war against them both.

And Zod knew that when a impressive force meets an immovable object, something had to give. He wasn’t about to be that something… not this time.

“Well I hope that’s a decision you’ll be able to live with… forever!”

Zod watched as Kal-El hurtled backwards through time and space and listened as the consciousness within screamed in agony and despair, tried to fight for control of its physical body. Until all that stood before him was blackness both outside the barn and inside himself.

And Zod smiled as the consciousness within gave up the fight as his reason to fight, his reason to hope disappeared from view and was lost.


End file.
